Been following this thread but didn't feel compelled to post until now.
I had the same issue happen with mine (hc800) running latest driver, went from 3.1.0 to 3.1.1. but only after I purposefully updated it after talking to Ari, getting feedback and troubleshooting on my own controller. Around the beginning of Jan I heard Jeremy making comments on the facebook group about the issue and since I had not heard anything reached out to Ari to see if he had any info, which he did not until he tried the update himself and found the issue and correct it with a patch right away.
Now I can relate to AK1 being in a jam, running circles etc to get a controller back to optimum running condition and then being upset about the whole process, on the other hand like Ari mentioned it only affected connectivity with composer pro so at that point I would have done some searching on the KB and FB/Online forums for answers.
Theres even a post on the official forums where Ari mentions:
Ive had catastrophic failures when doing updates with C4, so this kind of issue is nothing new nor phases me anymore, as a technician/programmer you get used to it and figure out all the tips and tricks to get a system back up and running asap (image update tool etc)